THE NEW YORKER, MARCH 9, 2015
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more than a century, filled with bank
robbers, train robbers, killers, mobsters,
rapists. As I headed up the steep con-
crete steps to see Gregory Boertje-
Obed, I thought about the thousands
of violent inmates who had been locked
away there. Many had reached the top
of the stairs, walked into the place,
and never walked out.
I met with Boertje-Obed in a small
visiting room filled with beige plastic
chairs. The only other people in the
room were a prison o cial and a correc-
tions o cer, both of them polite and
friendly and not especially interested in
our conversation. Leavenworth is a
medium-security facility today. But
gang members, drug dealers, and mur-
derers are still incarcerated there, amid a
prison culture rigidly divided by race.
The typical inmate is serving a ten-year
sentence. In an environment that would
frighten most people, Boertje-Obed
seemed calm, grounded, and philosoph-
ical. He was there for a reason, and was
just fine with it.
As a young man, Boertje-Obed
seemed an unlikely candidate for a cell
block. He grew up in a series of Iowa
towns---Pella, Sioux Center, Ames. His
father was a biology teacher, and the
family was deeply religious. They at-
tended two services at the local Dutch
Reformed church every Sunday. Boertje-
Obed went to Tulane University in
1973, joined the Army R.O.T.C. to
help cover the tuition, and then entered
a graduate program at Louisiana State
University to study social psychology.
He wrote a master's thesis on whether
personality tests could predict leader-
ship ability and hoped to become an
academic researcher. Before that could
happen, he became a first lieutenant
in the Army to fulfill his R.O.T.C.
obligations.
Assigned to a combat-engineer bat-
talion at Fort Polk, in central Louisiana,
Boertje-Obed trained to be a supervi-
sor at a medical-aid station. In battle,
his job would be to organize the care of
the wounded. In 1980, he was part of
a major field exercise in Louisiana.
During the war game, a Soviet armored
column headed south from Monroe
toward his unit. His battalion camped
out in the fields and prepared for a nu-
clear, biological, or chemical attack,
donning gas masks and protective suits.
Boertje-Obed was in charge of the
medics. He had to make sure that ev-
eryone wore the masks for an hour, then
two hours, then three, four, five. Mem-
bers of his unit began to cheat, pulling
the masks away from their faces. It was
excruciating to wear the masks for ten
minutes, let alone four or five hours.
The whole exercise seemed pointless
to Boertje-Obed; he'd die during a real
attack.
Boertje-Obed had begun reading
about Dorothy Day, who had encour-
aged workers at munitions plants to
walk away from their jobs. "God will
lead and provide for you," she had as-
sured them. It seemed as though Day
were speaking directly to him. He read
the Bible and books about civil disobe-
dience. He started to believe that you
should love your enemies. The field ex-
ercise was his tipping point. Nope, he
thought. I won't coöperate anymore in
the planning for nuclear war.
Boertje-Obed left the Army, re-
turned to Baton Rouge, and took the-
ology classes at L.S.U. He became in-
volved in anti-nuclear activism, studied
nonviolent resistance with Daniel Ber-
rigan, moved to Jonah House, and
lived there for seventeen years. Boertje-
Obed and Philip Berrigan painted
houses together three or four times a
week and planned break-ins at nuclear-
weapons sites. Boertje-Obed's life be-
came a series of protests, arrests, jail-
ings, and imprisonments on behalf of
peace. At one point, like the Berrigans,
he went on the run. But that
was an exception. On a fun-
damental level, he accepted
responsibility for his actions.
When, during a Plowshares
trial, a court-appointed at-
torney tried to persuade a
jury that he was innocent,
pointing to the absence of
fingerprints or photographs
linking him to the scene,
Boertje-Obed stood up, told the jury
he'd done it, and started to explain why.
The judge cited him for contempt of
court.
In the months leading up to the Y-12
break-in, Boertje-Obed was happily
married, living at the Loaves and Fishes
Catholic Worker House in Duluth, and
painting houses. One of the few times
that he cross-examined a government
witness during the trial in Knoxville was
to question the amount of paint that
Babcock & Wilcox bought to cover up
the gra ti. He thought twenty buckets
sounded excessive.
Boertje-Obed was slight and soft-
spoken, wearing a beige prison uniform
that looked a couple of sizes too big.
But, as I listened to him talk about his
faith and his devotion to nonviolence it
became clear that deep down he was
harder and tougher than most of the in-
mates in the yard. Henry David Tho-
reau spent a single night in jail as an act
of civil disobedience and then wrote a
famous essay about it. Boertje-Obed
had already spent more than a thousand
nights behind bars for his beliefs and
may spend at least a thousand more. He
seemed to have no regrets. "You must
live your Christian beliefs fully," he told
me, "as though judgment may come at
any moment."
Boertje-Obed said that no one from
the government has ever asked him for
suggestions about how the security at
nuclear-weapon sites could be im-
proved. He certainly doesn't want
terrorists to do what he's done. The
Bureau of Prisons sent him to Leav-
enworth, nine hours away from his
family, he said, because it considers
him to be a "domestic terrorist." Boert-
je-Obed plays a lot of Scrabble now, be-
longs to a Bible-study group, and
spends time teaching a man in his cell
block how to read. If he's attacked by
another inmate, he won't fight back. But
he might intervene to sepa-
rate other inmates who are
fighting.
Right before the correc-
tions o cer led him out of
the room, Boertje-Obed
looked me in the eye and
gave a subtle little smile.
I stood across the street
from Leavenworth Peniten-
tiary, taking in the view. The
Stars and Stripes hung from a flagpole
in front of the steps, sunshine glistened
in the razor wire, the sky was clear and
blue. The prison looked like an image
on an old postcard, a haunting, uniquely
American symbol of state power. And
a thought occurred to me: the walls of
the penitentiary guarding this pacifist
were taller and more impenetrable than
any of the fences at Y-12.